Wasteland

Wasteland

Wasteland is a video installation which explores the idolization of celebrities created by a mass media society, based on the idea of para–social relationships between viewer and media.

Scope: Video Installation | Video Edition | Concept

Inspired by the 1961 speech made by Newton N. Minow, Wasteland immerses in the distorted reality of television. After almost 55 years of Minow’s critique, we find ourselves in a vast land of Reality Television Shows where, although the quality of the content is low, the ratings are high. Reality shows provides an open window to people’s feelings and fears; we know and understand their motivations, we are allies in their plans to success, their breakdowns and fights.

The strength of the project depended on the “real” dialogs from the shows. By removing the over-the-top situations, the drama or any kind of story or context, Wasteland recreated a conversation between different strangers, with all of its glitches, loud voices and reactions for the sake of creating a meaningless conversation.

Once we take a deeper look at these people who we idolize it is impossible not to wonder if these are the kind of people who we want to befriend. As stated by Chris Rojek, author of Fame Attack “There is no doubt that celebrity culture makes people passive and dependent and raises the difficult question of what kind of citizens such people are”.

The process

The installation consisted in two parallel glass acrylics simulating a “decomposed” TV: the picture, the glass, the distorted and scratched screen and sound. The viewer can placed him/herself in any angle of the installation to hear the meaningless conversations, created from short clips from "real" interviews and scenes from a variety of Reality Shows.